Category: Macross Frontier

Short Synopsis: Sheryl finds out that her sickness… isn’t as innocent as we originally believed.
Highlights: Sheryl finally gets some good development.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Throughout the entire first half, I kept wondering why I kept watching this strange overbudgetted series. The characters were okay, but nothing really was remarkable outside of the sky-high production-values. Still, with this episode, I’m really glad that I kept watching and blogging this series. This episode was downright awesome, it first comes with an OP that’s ten times better than the original one (in my opinion, at least), then Sheryl’s character gets more development than the previous 17 episodes combined, and then the episode closes with an epic battle, where the soundtrack seems to surpass itself yet again.

Ah, to think that Sheryl was just a poor sick girl, plucked from the streets. It makes perfect sense now: it’s the same way that Ranka rose to her fame, although a bit more extreme, I guess. Now that it’s apparent that Sheryl’s singing abilities hardly have any effect when compared to Ranka, Grace has no reason anymore to take care of her, and basically just kills her off by letting the disease that got hold of her when she was young spread again. She’s really meant to be hated, having taken her business-like nature way too far out of control.

And I still remain convinced that Bobby should have gotten an episode of his own in the first half. His few scenes of manliness in this episode were awesome, and I feel that the creators could have done so much more with him if they spent a bit more attention to fleshing the guy out.

The thing I’m scared off the most right now is what Sheryl and Ranka will turn into. Sheryl will probably be fine once (or if) she recovers from her illness, but Ranka seems to be heading right down to the path of the damsel in distress, waiting to be rescued by the prince(ss) on the white horse (or mecha in this case). It’s not the cliché that gets me, but I want these characters to stand up on their own, and don’t sit around and wait for the inevitable like a bunch of potatoes.

Short Synopsis: The plot thickens as Ranka’s ability to calm down the Vajra gets more and more important.
Highlights: Ozma gained a lot of depth in this episode.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Satelight, you disappoint me. With the huge budget of this series, you couldn’t even find a good voice-actress for the seven-year-old Ranka? Joking aside, this episode might very well be my favourite of the entire series. It’s really one of these episodes in which nothing much happens, and yet the plot is pushed forward a lot. It’s very much different from the intermezzos we saw in the first half of this series, which mostly goofed off. The selection of insert songs was also pretty nice to listen at, and complemented their scenes well.

Especially Ozma was awesome, with his brotherly worries about Ranka. Macross Frontier isn’t exactly your manly mecha-series, but this guy provides an appreciated exception to this rule. We now also learn (that, or I noticed this a bit late) that he’s been having an affair with Catherine. Strangely enough, it was also interesting to see Alto act more as a side-character. Interesting how some main characters make great side-characters, and side-characters make great main characters.

Speaking of side-characters, I do have one complaint. In this episode, we learn that Kuran has a crush on Saotome, but it felt really abrupt, which got me thinking about how little airtime she’s actually had in this series. I mean, she’s been really overshadowed by the rest of the cast of Macross Frontier, even though she’s got a pretty interesting character, and there are more people like that on this series. I also feel that Catherine needs more time to be fleshed out, and especially people like Bobby, Lam, Mena and Jeffrey Wilder have been horribly ignored so far.

Short Synopsis: Grace uses Ranka’s abilities as Sheryl gets more and more jealous.
Highlights: Best soundtracks of the series yet.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Ah, of course. The reason why Grace went after singers like Ranka and Sheryl was for their deculture-ability, in an attempt to get rid of the Vajra. Apparently, the deculture didn’t work with Sheryl, so she tried Ranka instead, and this episode proved to be a success, as Ranka’s song created a fairly easy victory in a battle against the Vajra.

I must say that the soundtrack for this series is as huge as its animation-budget. This episode introduced even more new songs and tunes, and strangely they felt like they were the best tracks of this show’s OST I’ve heard so far. Especially Ranka’s song with a new instrumental track added to it, it’s amazing what a few different instruments can do to the tone of a song. It finally gave a sort of sci-fi feel that I’ve been missing in this series. But then again, this is just the opinion of a guy who isn’t a fan of j-pop. ^^;

The love-triangles are also getting heated up more than ever. While I find it hard to imagine that Brera would be going after his sister, the guy does create an awful lot of jealousy for Alto, in the same way that Sheryl’s jealousy continues to grow. It’s good to see that they’re both starting to realize that they’d better get serious if they want to prevent from losing.

Short Synopsis: This episode closes off the first half and introduces the second half of Macross Frontier. Oh, and in order to fill up time, it stuffs in a bunch of recaps.
Highlights: Thankfully tries to be more than a recap.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Like expected, the previous episode marked the end of the first half of Macross Frontier. So indeed, what better place would there be for a recap than at this point? Still, I’m surprised at how much new content did make it into this series. We get introduced to two strange voices inside a strange ship (which my limited Japanese couldn’t understand, unfortunately), Grace returns in a new body, and she and Brera recruit Ranka for their next job.

Alto meets an old Zentradi, who likes mode trains and apparently is connected to him, and at the same time the love-triangle also progresses a bit. Te recap-parts were also much less boring than expected, since the creators stuffed the best-animated scenes all together, making it a visual feast and the best tracks of the series were also played. This is indeed what a recap should be: more than just repeating what happened before in the series.

Short Synopsis: Romances bloom as the Vajra unleash another attack on the Macross fleet.
Highlights: Action-packed climax to the first half of Macross Frontier.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
I think that this episode marks the end of the first half of Macross Frontier, but I guess that for that to be certain, we need to watch episode 15. I’m very interested into what sort of series the second half will evolve, and where its story will be going from now on. In any case, this episode did its job pretty nicely and delivered a very enjoyable episode.

For a moment, I was afraid that Ranka would turn into a dull damsel in distress, but there was a very good reason for her kidnapping, it seems. There’s more to her than just being Brera’s brother, as she shares some sort of hidden connection with the Vajra that Brera doesn’t. It’s almost as if she unknowingly stands on the side of the Vajra.

This episode also sparked a bunch of cute romances between the side-characters. The captain turns out to have an admirer, and Luca and Nanase also seem to fancy each other. I’m a fan of these quick romances between the side-characters somehow. Probably because when compared to romances between lea characters, they’re much less inclined to get in the way of what’s really important, and they hardly ever feel annoying or forced for some strange reason.

Also, who was that woman that Ranka met, while inside her trance in the Vajra’s ship? Is it someone that was already introduced in an earlier macros-series, or is her identity still unknown?

Short Synopsis: Some sort of outside jamming crashed Ranka and Alto’s craft in the previous episode. In this episode, Ranka gets taken by the Varja.
Highlights: A couple of very intriguing plot-twists.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Now this is what I’ve been waiting for! Finally the plot is turning into something interesting. The Macross that was discovered in the previous episode turns out to be some kind of disguised Varja-spaceship, and Sheryl’s manager reveals herself as a party of the bad guys. It also makes me wonder why Ranka’s photos were in that space-ship, and what the relation is between the Varja and these bad guys.

There was also some sweet romance in this episode, and the love-triangle also got some interesting development. This episode seems to suggest that the second half is going to be much more interesting than the first one, which was exactly what I was hoping for when I first decided to keep watching this series.

Well… yeah… at least I never saw this coming… it’s not every day where you can see an idol who cancels her first concert, crosses a galaxy and tames hordes of huge bloodthirsty soldiers just by singing. The sudden serious nature of this episode really caught me by surprise, but the most baffling was of course the way that it went from seriousness to silliness when Ranka arrived.

I’m obviously not that big of a fan of those Zentradi who all forgot about fighting and dumped their weapons, just because Ranka showed up. In fact, I’m wondering how they’ve even heard of Ranka. I can understand how she’s known in the Frontier-fleet, but I think that the entire universe is a bit too early to think about when she hasn’t even done her first live concert. Either that, or I hardly know anything about the Japanese idol-scene. I suspect it’s the latter…

One interesting detail is that Sheryl finally seems to realize that she isn’t going to get Alto that easily. In the last episode, she knew the date of Ranka’s first live concert, and one of the reasons she invited him to come along was probably so that he would miss said concert. Now that that plan failed, she became sick and Ranka found a device that crosses time and space in an instant (that may have required a bit more build-up, but whatever), I can see some nice character-development coming for the second half of this series. 🙂

Also, here’s a question to those who saw the original Macross: the “Macross” that Alto and Ranka ran into at the end of the episode, is that some kind of mecha that appeared in an earlier series?

Nothing exciting happened in this episode, but it’s a vital one for the love-triangle between Alto, Sheryl and Ranka. With this, I don’t think there’s much chance of Ranka and Alto getting back together, now that the guy just stood up on her and went to fool around with Sheryl. Especially since the creators have been “subtly” hinting that Sterne will get involved with her somehow. I’ll eat my hat if that fluffy animal won’t make the two of them hook up in one way or another.

The rest of the episode was filled with the usual stuff, including lots and lots of fanservice (I knew that it was only a matter of time before the creators decided to stuff Sheryl into a school swimsuit…). Still, I’m surprised at how sneaky Sheryl turned out to be. At first I thought that she’d just let Ranka do with Alto as she pleased, but this episode made very clear that she’s trying to keep Alto away from Ranka. That’s what you get when you start dating a pop idol who’s used to get what she wants. ^^;

I also liked the small bit of politics that was introduced in this episode, with the 33rd fleet and all. It’s good to know a bit more about the Macross universe, especially since I haven’t seen the other series yet. At the same time, Alto also got some more background. So while it was a bit of a boring episode, it certainly wasn’t a waste.

Definitely the best episode of Macross Frontier yet! While from the outside, this looked like a series with a huge story, the huge focus of Macross Frontier does remain its cast of characters, and of course this needs a bit of time to warm up. When such a character-focused series starts, you’ll also never know whether the creators will handle the character-development well, or fail to develop the series properly. It’s always a hit or miss with these kinds of series, but it seems like Macross Frontier is heading towards the hit.
Most episodes so far have been either mostly serious or mostly silly, but this is I think the first time that an attempt is made at a combination of both. The result works out really well. I think I’ve accepted by now that realism isn’t the strongest point of focus for this series, so the way Ranka eventually became famous is actually really well done. She saw her chance to play in a movie with some big names on it and grabbed it, cheered on by Alto who ended up playing the male lead due to his fame as a certain princess.

I do want to note, though, that the animation for this series is becoming a bit disappointing, considering its budget. And I don’t mean that this series doesn’t look gorgeous: the art is really pretty, but I keep having trouble taking screenshots, simply because the characters’ faces keep ending up distorted. Especially Ranka and Alto are guilty of this. Having a huge budget is okay, but that does not mean that the drawings are allowed to get sloppy. That’s the difference between the huge budget of Macross Frontier and Seirei no Moribito: Seirei no Moribito focused on solidness, while Macross Frontier is more aiming at creating a spectacle.

Thankfully Macross Frontier is back on track with this episode. Okay, the question remains whether it’ll stay this way for long, but at least I’m glad that this episode turned out pretty nicely. For once, the focus is on the side-characters, and it’s about time that they too got a bit of development. It’s about time that especially Kuran got some attention, because I’ve hardly seen anything of her in the past few episodes.

If I understood things correctly, then Mikhael lost his parents when he was young, and then continued to live on with his sister. is sister then got killed in a friendly fire-accident when she was a pilot of some sort. At the time, Kuran lived with them as well (suggesting a possible love-relationship between the two for the future-episodes of Macross Frontier).

It’s good to see an episode focused on giving background to the characters. This’ll definitely be useful for future episodes. The fight scenes were also pretty entertaining, and it’s here where you can really hear the greatness of Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack. At the same time, Ranka continues to do very random jobs, and showing that it indeed does take a lot of work to become a popular idol.

Also, who was it, spying on the meeting of the Macross Frontier leaders?